The rule redefines base wages for public employees as something other than what a teacher makes right now. No performance pay, overtime premium pay, reimbursement or assistance for furthering education, and when you add it all together, it amounts to Wisconsin teachers are about to take a 30% on-average pay cut. Act 10 redefined base wages as what the lowest educated and experienced staffer of your district is earning. Even though Act 10 left salaries as the only thing on the bargaining table, Scott Walker is putting everybody on the bottom rung. Oh yeah – that average 30% wage chop is on top of the average $500 per month increase in benefit costs. It is critical that you tell your friends that are teachers to listen to this podcast, since they were handling their underfunded classes during this interview.

Please make sure that everyone you know who supports public education listens to this clip:

@John: Pardon me, but what part of negotiation do you not understand? I have three friends who are/were teachers. They accepted less pay for those benefits. Consequently, making them pay more for benefits, which were negotiated for in good faith, without an equivalent pay raise is a cut.

It just keeps coming. It seems illogical that these ALEC Republicans continue to cut public worker income despite failed economic policy, but it makes perfect sense. Think how local officials might be relieved that they don’t have to cut their pay and discontinue services as tax revenues fall. And the public relieved that maybe their taxes might not go up, and maybe their employers might keep them on if they applaud the cuts. Walker/Koch don’t give a hoot if the economy falters or the environment is trashed: it’s all about maintaining power and changing history so that they can exploit the world.

Other Side:
To understand teacher demonization one must recognize that it is a deliberate effort and long in the making. It has a multi-tiered strategy; at the heart of it is global-corporatist education reform. It is by no accident that NCLB and the creation of a European Education Space evolved at roughly the same time – the EES, a little earlier. Both are driven by the same forces, and embedded within that corporate, philanthropic-conglomerate model are a number of assumptions regarding “obstacles to reform.” Those obstacles are identified as teachers, the education profession, and the public education system itself. For ultimately, the drivers behind “21st Century education reform” seek to redefine not only the individual educator’s role within the educational system, but also to entirely realign the governance of education systems. In order to do that teachers, their profession, and the system in which they operate must be degraded and regarded as disreputable – demonized.

No doubt I’ll be pounced on for what I’ll next suggest, but so be it. If you want to understand how teacher demonization is methodologically achieved study Goebbels’ writings and his speeches. Examine, for instance, his New Years Speech, 1938. In it he discredits and dismisses the concerns of the educated and the intellectuals by casting them as complainers who focus on trivialities, who are unable to grasp the ideological significance of the big picture. These are the people Goebbels says, “We cannot win over, and do not even want to.” and “One does not need to take them all that seriously.”
“The people want nothing to do with these intellectual complainers.”

Seems to me a similar attitude has developed among those who are so dismissively and viciously critical of teachers and public employees in general. What should be of concern is that the attitude Goebbels expressed in 1938 marked the end-game of the demonization process. What that attitude signifies is that nothing put forth by those who have been demonized can ever be considered as remotely credible – it need not even be examined. John’s dismissive comment, reducing devastating pay cuts as just liberal spin, an attempt “to make something out of nothing” then his reversion to the ever repeated (and fundamentally incorrect) idea about what constitutes a pay cut exemplifies this underlying demonizing attitude most clearly.

Demonization of political opponents has been occurring all throughout history. Goebbels was hardly the first to apply the strategy, but how he achieved the goal of demonization, and who was targeted for demonization, I think, has demonstrable parallels in the political conflicts we are engaged in today. To disregard its influence in Wisconsin politics would be a mistake.

@PJ: I certainly won’t demonize you for the use of Goebbels as an example. In many ways he was ahead of the game. And let us not forget his tactics have been thoroughly studied and used. I’m not saying orgs like MediaTrackers or MacIver are Goebbels-like, but they certainly understand his techniques. Biased journalism is one.

Also, thanks for the additional background info on teachers. I thought it had be more than simple resentment.